Check Engine
by Hedgerose
Summary: The Jeep meets the Impala just once.


The Jeep meets the Impala just once.

They're parked next to each other at a no-name diner in a California town; both of them smell too much like blood and creak when they go too fast.

The Impala's been re-built more than the Jeep has, but with more care- her human's hands are gentle when it touches her, except that once when they were both hurting so much already anyway. "Hey," she says, whispering through her gears.

The Jeep makes an interested rumble, but most of her attention is focused inside the diner- her human must be in there, the Impala reasons, just like hers are.

"Hey," she says again, and the Jeep sighs.

"What do you want?" the Jeep says.

"Your human in there?" she asks, because it's as good a conversation opener as any, and she kinda wants to get to know the car who smells like she does.

"Mmhm," the Jeep responds, distracted. "Yours?"

The Impala laughs. "Probably getting pie," she says, and then she sighs. "It'll be weeks before I get the smell out." She doesn't might it so much, not really, but the flour-butter-sugar-fruit scent isn't the one she wants her humans to have- she likes it when they feel like they're part of her, when they're oil and leather and grease and hot metal.

"Mine's getting breakfast," the Jeep says. Then, quieter: "It got broken again last night."

The Impala wishes she were just a little bit closer, so she could tap the Jeep's door with her own, because the Jeep sounds so sad when she says that, and the Impala understands about having broken humans. Hers got broken once, and they get cracked and bent all the time; they leak fluids onto her running board and soak into her seats until she can't tell where she ends and they begin. But it's not the comfortable sort of home-symbiosis that she usually has with them- it only happens when they're low on gas or their batteries need re-charging and she can't do that for them.

"I'm sorry," the Impala says. "Humans do that sometimes."

The Jeep pouts. "They're too squishy," she says. "They don't- they can't be fixed the same way."

"I know," the Impala says, trying to console her. "Mine got broken once."

The Jeep wheezes out her distress. "Mine keep breaking, and this one's my third and I want to keep it, but it keeps leaking, and I tried to tell it to check its hoses but I don't think it understands."

The Impala gets it, she really does, because she's her humans' home- she knows that most humans don't spend all their time in their cars, but hers do and she loves them for it. The Jeep's human probably has a wood-house, too, but it's clear that she cares for her human just as much as the Impala does. "You could put your check engine light on," she suggests, and the Jeep makes a frustrated noise, squeaking her brakes.

"I tried that," she says. "And it took me to the fixing-place, but then I got squishy in my undercarriage and my human leaked from its face, but it didn't stop doing the things that break it."

The Impala has been her humans' car since before they were tiny and squalling in the back seat; she's known them broken and leaking. She's been a twisted hunk of metal and glass, felt barely like herself, but her humans always build her back up until she is gleaming and rumbling again. She feels sorry for the Jeep, if she always gets taken to the fixing-place and her human doesn't fix her itself.

"I'm sorry," the Impala says. Maybe they're not all that similar after all: her humans take care of her so well, and they don't have a wood-house to go to- maybe that's the difference. Even when their fuel-wrappers pile up in her back seat and they grind dirt into her floor, she's still their home, and she cradles them, rocking whichever of them isn't driving to sleep and making sure their tapes never get tangled up in her dashboard. "Maybe it'll learn?"

The Jeep is crying, making soft sounds of distress, condensation from the AC collecting slowly on the ground beneath her. "I don't think it will," she says. The Impala wishes she could do something for the Jeep, but there's nothing to be done if her human won't listen. So she consoles her as best she can, and eventually the Jeep stops crying, tears subsiding.

The Impala's humans come back out before the Jeep's does, and she hates to leave. She thinks about not starting, but her humans have been through a lot lately, and she doesn't want to do that to them. So she rumbles her goodbyes and hopes that if they meet again, the Jeep will be happier and her human won't be broken any more.

Her humans slide inside her and her engine purrs, pleased. It's time they got back on the road.

(When Stiles comes out of the diner, his check engine light is on. He swears, because he just had his car in the shop and he does not have time for this right now. He gets it checked, but the new mechanic says that nothing's wrong. He runs a hand over the Jeep's hood, soothingly, and the light goes off.)


End file.
